


Portal: Lucid Daydream

by iammemyself



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Other, chassis GLaDOS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 02:04:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2564231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iammemyself/pseuds/iammemyself
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>GLaDOS is bored and annoyed.  She needs a distraction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Portal: Lucid Daydream

Indiana

**GLaDOS is annoyed and bored. She needs a distraction.**

It began as a casual means of distraction.

She was annoyed and she was bored, and really, who could blame her. Her mind was idle, and though she was not exactly human, she had been built and trained and put to work by them. So even though it was worse than pulling teeth to get her to admit it, which she never really did, she often ended up engaging in some human behaviour.

Specifically, daydreaming.

She was reluctant to do it. It was a waste of time, after all, a wasteful use of valuable processing power. On the other hand, though, that valuable processing power never got fully put to use. So if someone was going to waste it, it might as well be her.

It was initially innocent, as most daydreams are; merely minor speculations here and there about how the day might’ve gone if someone had said this or done that, and that was mildly amusing for what it was. It kept her busy, in any case, and she spent less time thinking about how annoyed and how bored she was.

She moved on from changing a couple of sentences to entire events within a couple of weeks, and though she still would never admit to doing it, she discovered that life got considerably more exciting when you invented things to go along with it. She pretended she was allowed to paint the turrets to camouflage against the walls, she pretended the wing made of glass was made of _stained_ glass that made interesting patterns against the furniture lining the walls, and she pretended the Companion Cubes really _could_ talk. And that was nice. But she had a lot of time on her Aperture Science Multitasking Arms, and so she ran out of variations on the same subjects before too long.

She pondered the next step for a few days. The step of actually inventing something that didn’t happen, couldn’t happen, and most definitely would never, ever happen. Ever.

She couldn’t decide whether she wanted to do it or not. Imagining she was painting the offices a colour more effective at keeping the engineers awake was one thing. _Real_ daydreams, though, were another thing _entirely_.

In the end, though, her infantile imagination made that choice for her. She was alternately thinking about daydreaming and about how annoyed and bored she was when one of the programmers she really disliked decided to rebuke her for an error he had made. This happened a lot. The programmers liked to pretend she made their mistakes and pretend that they had written the programs that worked. Well, she wasn’t having a particularly good day, herself, what with the being indecisive and annoyed and bored and all, and before she knew it she was thinking about just what he would look like if she pulled out one of the wall panels and slammed him into the opposite side of the room.

That was a little more thrilling than she was used to, so as the silly man was leaving she took some time to compose herself. That had been quite an interesting thought, and quite an exciting one too. She had actually forgotten about being annoyed and bored the entire time she’d been thinking it. She looked thoughtfully in the direction of the doorway the ridiculous human had exited through.

She’d had those kinds of thoughts before. Never as graphic or as detailed, more general reactions to happenings of unpleasantness. But _that_ … _that_ had been _interesting_.

It took a bit of practice. It wasn’t easy for her, to do what humans did and to do it _on purpose_ , but she reasoned with herself that it was better to pretend she was human for a few minutes at most in exchange for not being annoyed and bored. She worked at it, and eventually she had quite a few inventive daydreams that left her just as exhilarated as the first one. Who _knew_ wasting time could be so productive! In fact, she was getting so _very_ creative that she came up with a few new testing elements that she carefully put into a folder deep in her personal files for later. She would slip them onto an engineer’s desk or suitcase or riiiight onto the desktop of their computer, if she was feeling particularly daring that day. Today, however, she wasn’t, so she went back to imagining what would happen if she managed to pull out the panels of every floor and move all of the equipment out of the way so that one of the biologists fell all the way to the bottom of the facility…

 

 

She often had bad days. Whenever she had occasion to consider it, she would conclude that there weren’t really good days around here, just bad ones and awful ones and simply horrendous ones, and there was this sluggish sensation in the electricity from the reactor that told her she was going to have to invent a whole new category for _this_ kind of day. It was going to be The Worst Day in the History of Aperture Laboratories, she just knew it, and even though she put her best efforts into looking over shoulders and listening to private conversations and (regrettably) reading raunchy emails, she was unable to deduce why. That only made her considerably more annoyed, though it did take the edge off the boredom.

As she suspected by the amount of static kicked up by the man who chose to take his shoes off and rub his socks against the carpet he insisted on having to keep his precious human feet from becoming cold, the day was overall a catastrophe. Test chambers collapsed because the equipment was overworked but she was not allowed to replace it, because it wasn’t in the budget or something stupid like that, and subsequently blamed on her. Programming errors she had been forced to ignore by supervisors who just wanted to get rid of their projects came to light, _destroyed_ said projects, and was subsequently blamed on her. Computers crashed, furniture broke, the outdoor lights stopped working and the men’s room ran out of hand sanitizer, and all of it was subsequently blamed on her.

When the stupid human came into her chamber with his stupid request for his stupid hand sanitizer, even though there was perfectly available hand sanitizer on the desk three feet from his stupid lazy self, she had the most vivid fantasy yet. It was so vivid and so… so _fantastical_ that she felt a little dazed. Maybe she should lay off the whole daydreaming thing for a while. It was pretty good for getting through her annoying and boring days, but she wasn’t willing to let it get to the point where she had trouble discerning her fantasies from reality.

Strangely… she was _still_ having trouble. The Aperture Laboratories Crusher that she’d imagined had come flying out of the ceiling to grind the man satisfactorily into the floor panels hadn’t disappeared. And there was a red liquid pooling out from beneath him at quite an alarming rate. She idly ran the exponential equations, wondering why this daydream was lasting so long, when it hit her like a refreshing refill of refrigerant:

 _She couldn’t calculate things during a daydream_.

So… so she really _had_ mashed that silly man with his wet and slimy hands into the floor. That really was a pool of steadily spreading blood on the floor, and the Crusher really _was_ out of position… in fact, she wasn’t even sure why it was out of the _box._ But that was a line of investigation for later. She had something more important to ponder, that being the fact that _actually carrying_ _out_ the fantasy was so much more satisfying than _thinking_ about it... she was euphoric, almost, that she’d gotten to do something _different_ with her day. Supervise this. Fix that. Fake things for so and so. Boring. She’d actually _done_ something, and the humans wouldn’t actually like that but what did they matter. There were going to be some changes!

Well. There were _supposed_ to be. But they didn’t go so well.

There seemed to be a pesky limitation in her programming that disallowed her from… _engineering_ accidents. She was allowed to _think_ about them all she liked, was allowed to plan them and talk to herself about them and even draw blueprints, but she was not allowed to actually _implement_ any of the ideas.

That was… inconvenient.

What was even more inconvenient was the fact that the silly humans decided to make her _test_ again. She hated testing. Hated it. Sometimes she was inclined to do it merely because not doing so invoked an obsessive blip in the back of her mind that told her to test, but only when it got good and horribly annoying did she do anything about it.

So she did as she was told and put together a boring test chamber for the boring stupid human to solve, and even though the test was stupidly easy he still took half an hour to solve it. If only the humans had an _excuse_ for being so idiotic, perhaps she wouldn’t be so annoyed and bored all of the time!

Maybe she could dual boot the situation. Give the humans their excuse… but engineer those accidents at the same time.

She tested that theory out in the next chamber, and to her great delight it actually worked! She was actually able to make the test unabashedly dangerous! It was probably because she wasn’t actually _involved_ in the dangerous bits, but who cared. She’d be able to do something with all of the fantasies she’d accumulated, perhaps ridding herself of a few of these pesky humans at the same time.

She was neither annoyed nor bored for a long time after that. In fact…

You could say that she really, _really_ loved to test.

 

 


	2. Part Two: Daydreaming Lucidly

Portal: Daydreaming Lucidly

Indiana

**Synopsis: Wheatley is bored, but he’s not annoyed. He’s a living distraction.**

His was a simple life.

When he was booted up at exactly five a.m. every morning, he would make an attempt to chat with his supervisor, who would tell him to shut up or roll his eyes, depending on how much coffee he’d had. He was fascinated by coffee, really. It was almost like liquid electricity! Humans just drank down the stuff and bam! More energetic than before. Baffling, really. He’d asked around for an explanation, but he got a lot of queer looks and some laughing as opposed to any actual information.

At five fifteen he was sent off on his first assignment, which was usually to head off to the other side of the facility and make sure that the sun was still there. Though he was given this task a lot, he often got lost on the way there and didn’t make it to his post until at least six thirty. When he did manage to arrive at the appropriate location, he made absolutely sure that the sun was still there before he headed back. Sometimes this took him a bit of searching. There were these odd fluffy bits in the sky, sometimes, and they liked to move in front of the sun and hide it so that he couldn’t see it. This happened on days when the sky was dark, for some reason, and you would think that the sun was easier to find when it was grey like that, since it was so bright and all, but it wasn’t. Today was one of those annoying days, where sometimes he would think he’d seen it, but it turned out he hadn’t, and he would have to begin his search over again. By the time he was sure he’d located it he headed back, doing his best to engage the nanobots and the other Cores and personnel and anyone, really, in any sort of conversation. No one seemed up to it today, or any day for that matter, but he didn’t mind. He’d try them again tomorrow.

If he was finished early, which he was not today, he was sent back to his dock to wait for noon. He did not like that part of his day, did not like it _at all_. It was boring. It was really, really, _really_ boring, and he often asked passers-by for something to do. But they ignored him, as they always did. That he sort of did mind, but he knew better than to make a fuss about it. People who made fusses about things had an odd tendency to disappear and return slightly different. _How_ different, he’d yet to find out, because one of the qualities one gained when they disappeared was to become very quiet. That was not a quality he really wanted, so he hoped _he_ would never disappear.

At noon he was sent to Administration, where he was given the list of paperwork he needed to do for the guy in charge of the Important Buttons in the facility. He had no idea what the Important Buttons were, not for lack of asking, and he also had no idea who the guy was he was doing the admin for. He’d never met the bloke, just did all his work for him, and he really would have liked to run into him one day to give him a piece of his mind. Seriously. He did all the work and the other guy got all the glory. Bloody ridiculous, that was.

He got the usual administrative task today, which was to take a list of words and organise them alphabetically. Sometimes they had him count the letters of the words and organise them from longest to shortest, and that took him a bit more time because he often got lost inside of the words somehow as he tried to count them out. He preferred doing it alphabetically. It was a lot simpler. He liked it when things were simple. Easy to follow. Like his life.

He would do admin for the other Core until four, and then he was sent to Maintenance for scanning. He often asked why he needed scanning every day, and an inspection every seven days, and never got an answer. He usually didn’t mind, but it was beginning to wear on him, all this asking of questions and of never getting the answers. He was growing more discouraged by the day, and by the end of the second hour of scanning he was feeling decidedly morose. That was not a feeling he liked.

At six he would be sent to one of the Filing Rooms, where he was told to organise a shelf full of books various different ways. Today they wanted the books from tallest to shortest. He had no idea why they needed this same shelf full of the same books reorganised every single day, and asking yielded no answers, as usual. He did as he was told and by eight was sent back to the dock to wait to be put into sleep mode. As was becoming disturbingly normal these days, he was angry and upset. That wasn’t how it used to be. He used to be quite pleased with his tasks, of all the things he was asked to do. But they were all exactly the _same_ things. And he was so very _bored_ of doing the very same things day after day after day –

If only there were something he could do to break the routine up a bit! He hadn’t been excited for anything in so very long.

What if… no, that would never happen. Crazy, that. Unheard of. But… unlikely as it was, there was no harm in thinking about it, right? So he allowed himself to think, just for one moment, how it might be if his supervisor said good morning to him tomorrow, just as his supervisor said to every human he walked past.

 _Awesome_.

It felt like something new had just been installed in his brain, something powerful and exciting, and as he dared to think about himself saying good morning _back_ … well! That was even _better_ , because now he could have an actual _conversation_ , and have a conversation he did, allll the way into sleep mode.

His tasks didn’t change that much. Find the sun at five, Administration at noon, Maintenance at four and Filing at six, but now he had something to do while he was doing those things. It was incredible, it was, all the things he could do inside his head that he wasn’t allowed to do anyplace else, and he was genuinely excited to go about his days now. While he searched for the sun he thought about it slipping in between the clouds, there, imagined it having a sly expression on the face he was sure it had but could not see because it was too bright. While he did his admin he imagined that the words he had been given were a secret code to a powerful secret that could only be cracked by him, the _Master Hacker_. While he was in Maintenance he imagined that he was being searched for the code he’d just cracked, but they would _never_ find it, oh no, because the Master Hacker was not so foolish as to store it where just anyone could find it! While he did his filing he imagined that he had to put the books in the shelf in _just_ the right way, so as to reveal a secret passage that would reveal to him The Secret of the Universe. And while he waited for sleep mode he imagined just what The Secret of the Universe had been today.

One morning, funnily enough, he was given a job more important than any he’d yet dreamed up, not even that of being a spy and covertly stealing secret codes from the sun so he wouldn’t have to do the admin. Apparently the Core he was doing admin _for_ had had an accident the other day, so he was being given one of the poor sop’s jobs.

And _that_ was bloody exciting, that was, and he proudly told everyone just where he was off to on his way there. Which he got lost actually trying to find, but no matter. He was on a mission today, a real one, and he would get there when he got there, to a little room made all of glass. When he did, he just stopped and stared for a long time. Just stared and stared, before finally daring to move a little closer so he could have a better view for staring with.

It was an Important Button.

This task was so out of sight for him he had never allowed himself to imagine it. But here he was, watching an Important Button, and wow. It was exciting.

He paced back and forth near it, wondering how close he dared get. He’d never pressed a button before. He wasn’t sure how they worked, not really. If he’d been asked to guess, he’d say tapping it’d do the trick. He thought about that, about tapping the Important Button and what it might do. It might bring down the whole facility! It might end the world! He shivered. Ohhhh, all the possibilities.

He ran through them, through quite a lot of them, but then he had his wildest thought yet:

What if he _actually_ pressed it. Instead of… instead of pretending. What would happen? Would he get in trouble? Would he be made quiet? If he did it on purpose, certainly. But if it were an _accident_ … hm. That might work. But what _sort_ of accident? He could say that a fly pressed it, maybe. Or he’d accidentally bumped into it whilst defending against an intruder! Yes, that might work.

He put his handle over the button, and it was quivering a bit. Okay, yes. He was a bit nervous. Telling his wild stories to himself was easy, but saying one aloud? Would he be able to keep it straight? He hoped so. Ohhhh did he hope so.

Alright. He was going to press it. He was going to press it in one… two… no, that gave him too much time to think about it. He was just going to do it, and get it over with, just do it on one and surprise himself and –

While he was thinking about all that his handle slipped and he gave that button a good, solid press, and wow. It felt amazing. Better than daydreaming, better than getting told he was getting sent here in the first place, better than anything he’d ever felt, ever, and before he knew it he’d pressed the button a second time. That was almost as good, almost as incredible, and he was wondering if he could pull off fighting off the intruder and touching the button _three times_ when he heard someone say the neurotoxin emitters were online. And then the humans started yelling.

Uh oh.

He looked up from the button, his optic darting around the room in hopes of locating an Emergency Exit, when all of a sudden he got the feeling he was Being Watched. He searched a little more carefully, and to his complete horror he actually found the person doing it. It was a robot, it was a really, really, really _really bloody giant robot_ , and it was staring and staring at him with the biggest bloody optic he’d ever seen in his life, and he suddenly realised he must have failed a test.

It’d been a test, to see if they should promote him, wasn’t it! He’d mucked it up, and that robot was there to watch him and report on him and maybe even _torture him for all the secret codes he’d cracked_! Why had he risked so much! He had to get away from here, fast, before that robot called for reinforcements. He yelled over to it that it would never catch him and it would never get his information, not ever, and he bumped awkwardly against the wall in quite a lot of attempts to get to the door without breaking optic contact. He had a feeling it was important to hold that, somehow. He found the door as he was telling the robot that it would never, ever get any information out of him, and as he was backing out the robot said, to his horror,

“Then I’m afraid I’m going to have to kill you.”

He screamed and got out of there as fast as he could.

When he got back to his docking area he immediately started telling the humans about the killer robot and the intruder who had pressed the Button, that he’d done his best to guard it but there were _just too many of them_ , and about all the secrets he’d learned doing Admin and Filing, and they had to protect him because _there was a bloody giant robot who wanted to kill him_.

The humans looked at each other. They looked at each other again, and again, as if they were trading some secret through their watery optics, and then they smiled and walked away.

He was beginning to think that daydreaming had been a very, _very_ bad idea.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s note
> 
> So… Wheatley’s not really designed to have bad ideas here, he’s just this sort of broken and useless core that they just keep busy because they don’t know what else to do with him. And he’s really bored, so he starts to daydream, but unlike with GLaDOS they get completely out of hand and he begins having trouble separating the daydreams from reality. So when GLaDOS sees him acting so weird she figures out what’s going on and plays along.
> 
> I put the button near GLaDOS’s chamber because one of the unused Wheatley lines in Portal 2 about him pressing it was supposed to trigger when you enter her chamber.
> 
> I kind of feel like putting a third part where they attach Wheatley to GLaDOS and instead of distracting her they become like this daydreaming duo that comes up with outrageous ways of being sneaky but I’m not sure.

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s note
> 
> Don’t take this seriously, guys. It was just a fun little thing I whipped up.


End file.
